Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) joined Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Tuesday to demand that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid allow a vote on the House-passed bill blocking a continuation or expansion of the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty. Brooks said the policies of President Obama and Sen. Reid are killing the American dream. Brooks said:

I want to emphasize something – we are talking about the southern border but an important aspect of that is not just illegal aliens. A more important aspect of that is American citizens. Right now American families are struggling. They are having a difficult time finding jobs, and when they find jobs they are having a difficult time finding jobs that provide the kind of income that is necessary to support a family. For many, the American dream is something that they will never be able to reach so long as we continue to have a huge surge of illegal aliens across our southern border. I want to emphasize something right now about the American economy, remember Jimmy Carter and the economic malaise?

Brooks noted that recent studies have shown that President Obama’s economy is just as bad, if not worse, than the economy under the days of President Jimmy Carter–hailed as one of the worst economic presidents in history–and it’s largely due to his policies on immigration. Brooks continued:

The labor participation rate today, that’s the number of Americans who are actually pulling the load – doing the work – is at its lowest levels since the 1970s. A big part of that is what’s happening in the southern border. There was a report that came out recently that was startling, so startling that I asked my staff to make sure that the data in it was accurate, and we checked with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we checked with the Census Bureau, we checked with Homeland Security, and here is the data from the Center for Immigration Studies: there were 5.6 million jobs created from the first quarter of 2000 to the first quarter of 2014. Over that 14-year period of time, in the age bracket 16 to 65, a pretty large age bracket, 5.6 million jobs created by the American economy.

Brooks said that, of those, a negative percent of the jobs created over the past decade and a half went to American citizens.

“You know how many of those jobs went to American born citizens? Minus 127,000,” Brooks said. “You know what the employment situation is for American born citizens today? Over that 14-year period, because of the lost jobs, coupled with population growth, you now have 17 million more American citizens who are unemployed today than in the year 2000.”

Brooks said members of Congress should focus on representing American citizens over representing illegal aliens and aim to make sure Americans and legal immigrants get jobs–not illegal aliens. He added:

That’s why we have to focus on this southern border. Now I was elected by American citizens, people who can vote, and while I have compassion for people who want to come to America, particularly those who are lawful immigrants, and there is no nation on earth that is as compassionate as America is with respect to lawful immigration, my focus has to be on who gets the jobs: illegal aliens or lawful immigrants and American citizens. The Pew Hispanic Center says that there are roughly 8 million jobs in America today held by illegal aliens. Well I can only speak for myself and perhaps some of the folks who are with me today when that choice is made and the reason the United States Senate needs to vote on this legislation, is to represent American citizens who are struggling in this anemic economy under Barack Obama, and you can help American citizens by removing from the labor pool as many as possible of those illegal aliens who are holding American jobs and preventing even more from crossing the border and coming into America today.

Brooks said the only way to stop the left’s latest rage–“income inequality”–is to stop the president’s planned executive amnesty.

“So that is what this battle is about,” Brooks said. “If you want to stop income inequality – then Mr. Harry Reid, you ought to let these bills come up for a vote, because that will do more to address income inequality than anything else that this United States Congress can do. By decreasing the labor supply, which will force incomes and wages to go up, helping all American families regardless of ethnicity, regardless of race, regardless of chromosomes.”